Random thoughts from a carpetbagger living in the Great Republic of Texas

Friday, May 24, 2013

Notes from All-Boys Weekend

For over
25 years I have gone on an annual all-guys
golf weekend with the same 6 to 12 gentlemen. After a hiatus
of a few years, the trip resumed for me
this past weekend but with only my
brothers in attendance,and at a
more primo location.

Every
year, upon my return, St. Pauli Girl peppers me with the same
questions:“How's so-and-so doing? How
are his kids? How's his wife? Is he still at the same job?”

My answer is
usually: “Well, I didn't ask him about that. I
guess they're all fine. But I can tell you
his golf scores.”

Conversely,
when St. Pauli Girl returns from her annual all girls weekend, my
only question is: “Did you have a pillow fight?”

This
year, my golf weekend got off to a rough start when my clubs
failed to arrive on the same plane as myself. I'm used to this
indignity and know the procedure. However, due to the small presence
of this particular airline at the
equally small South Carolina airport,
all of the employees were out loading the plane for its departure.
After waiting thirty minutes, I approached the
friendly woman at the ticket counter who typed
quickly on the computer,
then announced, “Your golf
clubs are in Dallas.”

Then she asked
me how I checked my bag, as if maybe I had
given instructions that my clubs would
prefer a later flight out of Dallas so
it could have some drinks and party with the other cargo for
awhile.

“Well,
I don't know what they're doing there,” she said, “but we'll
deliver your bag to you after the last
flight at 7:00 p.m.”

So
when my brothers and I played our first round that afternoon,
I had to use a set of rental clubs. We rode
in carts but had a caddy with us to help out, per
the course's requirements. He probably should have been
heavily armed: we saw more alligators than
people on the course.

(If you have binoculars, you might be able to see the alligator crossing the fairway above. This is also a fine example of the lack of zoom on my phone camera. This alligator was probably 8 feet long or so and was not the gator from the story below.)

At one point,
we watched a cute baby alligator make
its way across the fairway in front of us. We raced for our phone
cameras but for me, with no zoom, the
pictures didn't turn out. Still hoping for
a good action shot, I said, “We'd better be on the lookout
for the mama gator.”

After we had
passed the cute baby gator, we
saw a very large gator on the opposite fairway swinging its
massive tail back and forth. So of course I
thought it was the mama acting protectively,
then I realized that it was probablyjust a big ol' hungry
non-relative. The baby gator stopped suddenly
about twenty yards from the large gator,which
had started to approach it.
Suddenly the small gator turned and ran back to where it had come
from, with the large gator in hot pursuit.

Our caddy, whom
I shall refer to as Marlin Perkins, took off toward the gators. The
large gator chomped down on the small gator's tail but it managed to
wriggle free and escape. Upon his return, young
Marlin Perkins said, "I was trying to
help."

I commented, “A
really good caddy would have taken our cameras to get a closer
picture.”

The lesson here
is that big alligators run really fast on land, and as I remembered
from my golf days back
in Florida, if you are ever chased by an alligator, you need to run
in a zig-zag pattern. Although alligators are fast, they are not very
agile.

The rest of the
weekend produced just boring golf stories.
However, coming home, on my final flight
out of Dallas, I saw a celebrity
in the gate area who I shall call Bob. I thought
aboutapproaching him and sharing
an anecdote on our related travails but decided not to as I watched
someone else go up and shake his hand like
they were long lost friends,
which, judging from the look on Bob's face, they were not. I
realized it would be about the same as if a
stranger came up to me, slapped
me on the back, and said that we'd
once shared a urinal trough at Wrigley Field,
remember?

I happened
to be in line behind Bobas we boarded the
plane and waited as he stowed his carry-on bags,
then carefully folded himself into his seat (hereally istall). He kept a distant stare as
if he wasstudying some
philosophical conundrum floating just above
everyone else's head. But I
suspect it was to avoid
conversation-engaging eye contact with strangers.

In
the end, it just reminded me that people are people, and we all have
our own problems yet deal with many common ones like no legroom on
airplanes (except Bob was in an exit row). I also noticed he didn't
check any bags either.

On
the other end of the country, my brother arrived at his final
destination but could not locate his golf bag on the baggage
carousel. He went to the baggage office where he found out that his
golf bag had taken an earlier flight. Maybe next time if we
coordinate how we check in our bags, we can all arrive at the same
time.

Playing with different clubs would probably affect a good golfer but I can play just as poorly with any set of clubs. We were in South Carolina, Kiawah Island to be exact. I lived in Lorida for 3 years but never saw as many gators as this weekend not to mention a real gator tussle!

Dex forgot to mention that his own clubs are knock-offs assembled about 20 years ago by a buddy from the previous golf excursions. Let's put it this way, he's always ready in case a hurling competition breaks out, less so if he gets an opportunity to stick a tee in the gorund at Augusta. So he's got that going for him . . .

About Me

I live in a small town in Texas. I am the real America. I wasn't born in the republic which means I'm not really Texan. I do have a pickup truck but since it's a Nissan, I'm still not considered Texan. I only drive it when no one is looking. I'm a man without a country and a man without a car. I'm an entrepreneur but not a good one as I recently had to close down the family restaurant. But that makes me an economic expert. I can seriously blame the restaurant's closing on Obama, Cheney, NAFTA, Cash for Clunkers, TARP and even Bernie Madoff who never spent millions in my restaurant. Not even a dime.